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The Rollins Museum of Art (RMA) is pleased to announce its fall 2025 season, featuring four new shows and one remaining on view from the summer season, highlighting work from the museum’s extensive collection as well as recent acquisitions and special presentations. This season’s offerings invite visitors to examine the significance of dress across time and culture, consider how artists have mobilized printmaking to tell stories of diaspora and resistance, reflect on the role of liberal arts in confronting the promises and perils of technology, engage with the intellectual and artistic dialogue of the Bloomsbury Group, and discover recent acquisitions that expand and diversify the museum’s collection. Each of these exhibitions is sure to spark conversation and provoke introspection among guests, whether they be new visitors or seasoned patrons.

Manners of Dress

Critically examining the significance of diverse manners of dress from a contemporary perspective, a selection of paintings, sculptures, photographs, and the museum’s unique collection of watch keys are displayed in a transhistorical dialogue that activates multiple interpretations. Traditional works by artists like Dirck Hals and Paulus Moreelse capture the importance of textures, materials, and styles to communicate visually. Contemporary works by Elinor Carucci, Caitlin Keogh, and Paulina Olowska provide a counterpoint to explore visual signifiers of status and identity. Expanding the exhibition’s scope, the inclusion of watch keys from the 16th to 19th centuries highlights their dual role as both functional objects and expressions of fashion and social standing. Manners of Dress features works from various time periods and cultural traditions, encouraging viewers to establish points of connection and consider critical perspectives.

Impressions: Modern Prints from the Benjamin Ortíz and Victor P. Torchia Jr. Collection

Prints have long served as a powerful medium for storytelling and cultural preservation. At the RMA, they comprise a significant part of the collection, with over 2,000 examples by artists from diverse backgrounds. Since 2021, the RMA has been greatly enriched through the generosity of Benjamin Ortíz and Victor P. Torchia Jr., whose gifts of more than 25 prints by Latin American, Caribbean, and American artists have significantly expanded the collection.

This exhibition highlights these acquisitions, which demonstrate how artists have used printmaking to engage with themes of diaspora, resistance, and cultural legacy. Imna Arroyo’s Ancestors of the Passage honors Afro-Caribbean heritage and commemorates the Middle Passage, while Rafael Ferrer reimagines Puerto Rican history through poetic maps. José Guadalupe Posada and the artists of the Taller de Gráfica Popular mobilized printmaking in support of independence and labor struggles. Victor Gómez and Luis Cruz Azaceta reflect on the displacement and identity of exile, while Howardena Pindell explores resilience and healing through abstraction.

Art Encounters: Technology, Innovation, and Obsolescence

This exhibition draws upon the knowledge and perspectives of Rollins College faculty to highlight the value of a liberal arts education in navigating the complexities of an increasingly technologized world. Quotes from faculty representing diverse disciplines are integrated with works from the collection to prompt dialogue and deepen understanding of how emerging technologies—such as artificial intelligence, digital surveillance, and automation—are reshaping higher education, human identity, and the boundaries of knowledge itself. Faculty contributors include English professor Lucy Littler, art history professor MacKenzie Moon Ryan, and Rachel Walton, associate professor and head of Library Digital Strategies & Scholarly Communication.

Portrait of a Movement: A New Approach to the Bloomsbury Group

“On or about December 1910, human character changed.” Here, Virginia Woolf, with characteristic humor, refers to the pivotal moment when artist and critic Roger Fry staggered London with his two post-Impressionist exhibitions, marking the international development of modernism. Painters, novelists, and critics associated with Fry pioneered a distinctive visual style and a shift in cultural and societal attitudes; they were known as the Bloomsbury Group.

At its core, Bloomsbury was a conversation—an artistic and intellectual dialogue that blurred the boundaries between painting and literature, criticism and creation. The RMA holds an extensive collection of works by members of this collective, including Vanessa Bell, Roger Fry, Duncan Grant, and Walter Richard Sickert. Portrait of a Movement: A New Approach to the Bloomsbury Group celebrates the debut of Fry’s Summer in the Garden (1911), a significant portrait of Vanessa Bell recently acquired by the museum and displayed in the United States for the first time.

Amid renewed interest in the Bloomsbury Group’s artistic production, this exhibition builds on recent scholarship and ongoing revivals to offer a more nuanced interpretation of their work and activities. Resisting narrow biographical interpretations, it instead foregrounds the exchange of ideas, illuminating the group's dynamic dialogue with European modernism, gender, domesticity, and one another.

What’s New? Recent Acquisitions (Fall 2025 Edition)

The collection of the RMA is constantly expanding. Generous gifts and strategic purchases enrich and diversify our holdings, offering opportunities to engage with unique works of art. This installation features recent acquisitions on a rotating basis, allowing us to share with our visitors some of our new treasures soon after they become part of the museum’s collection. The selection reflects the museum’s sustained commitment to acquiring works in various media, from different periods, and by artists of diverse backgrounds, in alignment with our teaching mission and the curriculum of a liberal arts education. You may see some of these objects in context as part of themed exhibitions in the future.

This rotation includes works by Chico da Silva, Wade Guyton, and Lauren Lesko, among others.

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Related Programming

Outdoor Sculpture Tour
Enjoy the fresh Florida air as you explore six outdoor sculptures from the RMA collection. This 1.6-mile self-guided audio tour across the beautiful Rollins College campus begins at RMA’s front steps and ends at The Alfond Inn.

Virtual Exhibition Views
Accessible on any device, virtual visitors can explore the varied exhibitions that have been on view at RMA with just the click of a mouse. You can even use your virtual reality headsets to walk from our lobby through our galleries.

Saturdays (September 27–December 13) | 1 p.m.
Museum Highlights Tours
Visit RMA on Saturday afternoons for docent-led museum tours that highlight works from our current exhibitions. *No tours on November 29.

Tuesdays ’Til 7 | Every Tuesday until 7 p.m.
Visit after school or after work on Tuesdays for late nights at the museum.

September 19 | 11 a.m.
Exhibition Tour: Manners of Dress

October 1, November 5, December 3 | 6 p.m.
Happy Hour Tours
Join us in the lobby of The Alfond Inn in Winter Park for a 60-minute guided tour of selections from The Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art, part of the RMA permanent collection. Beverages are available for purchase before, during, and after the tour from Hamilton’s Kitchen Bar and The Café.

October 3 | 11 a.m.
Exhibition Tour: Impressions: Modern Prints from the Benjamin Ortíz and Victor P. Torchia, Jr. Collection

November 14 | 11 a.m.
Exhibition Tour: Portrait of a Movement: A New Approach to the Bloomsbury Group

November 18 | 6 p.m.
Lecture Vanessa Bell: The Life and Art of a Bloomsbury Radical
Corresponding with the exhibition Portrait of a Movement: A New Approach to the Bloomsbury Group, RMA welcomes Thomas P. Johnson Distinguished Visiting Scholar Dr. Wendy Hitchmough, emeritus senior lecturer at the University of Sussex and author of Vanessa Bell: The Life and Art of a Bloomsbury Radical (2025). Dr. Hitchmough presents new scholarship on works in the RMA collection by artists Vanessa Bell and Roger Fry, centering Bell as a key figure in the development of modernism. This lecture will be followed by a Q&A with the author.

December 2–7
Holiday Shop Sale
Enjoy shopping and artful gift wrapping at the museum while exploring the season’s exhibitions. Museum members receive double discounts on purchases.

December 5 | 11 a.m.
Exhibition Tour: Art Encounters: Technology, Innovation, and Obsolescence

Member Events

September 12 | 5:30–7 p.m.
Fall Exhibition Preview
Celebrate the opening of the Fall 2025 season at RMA with a sneak peek at the newly installed exhibitions that open to the public on September 13. Open to all RMA Members & Special Guests by invitation.

Family Programs

October 4, November 1 | 10–11:30 a.m.
Family Studio
Join us for a memorable morning of art and exploration at the RMA. Family Studio engages young children and their favorite adult in fun, interactive experiences inspired by our current exhibitions. Each program includes an exclusive tour and art activity inspired by works on view.

December 6 | 12–4 p.m.
Fall Fling
Join us for a FREE day of family fun at the RMA. Engage with current exhibitions through art activities, performances, and docent-led exhibition highlights tours. These all-ages events take place both inside and outside of the museum and are open to the public.

Programas en Español | Programs in Spanish

Acompaña a la Dra. Gisela Carbonell, Curadora, para recorridos guiados en español. Café y pastelillitos provistos por nuestro auspiciador Café Don Juan. | Join Curator Gisela Carbonell for exhibition tours in Spanish. Coffee and pastries provided by our program sponsor, Café Don Juan.

23 de septiembre | 6 p.m.
ARTE Y CAFÉ CON LA CURADORA
Manners of Dress

14 de octubre | 6 p.m.
ARTE Y CAFÉ CON LA CURADORA
Impressions: Modern Prints from the Benjamin Ortíz and Victor P. Torchia, Jr. Collection

9 de diciembre | 6 p.m.
ARTE Y CAFÉ CON LA CURADORA
Art Encounters: Technology, Innovation, and Obsolescence

• Rollins Museum of Art |
• Arts & Culture